Their faces were slightly blurred.

But the woman’s eyes were clear.

Ice blue.

Emma had those same eyes.

She didn’t know who the people were. The photograph had been found with her when hospital staff discovered her abandoned three days after birth. No name. No note. Just a baby wrapped in a gas station blanket and the photograph placed beside her.

It was the only proof she had that she came from somewhere.

That she belonged to someone.

Emma stepped out of the shed into the brutal midday heat of the Sunland Trailer Park. The air shimmered above cracked dirt roads, and rusted trailers baked beneath the relentless Arizona sun. She squinted toward the center of the park where a scrap yard sat behind a crooked fence made of mismatched metal panels.

Sully’s yard.

She had no reason to go there. Sully was the kind of man who enjoyed cruelty the way some people enjoyed music.

But as Emma walked past, a gust of hot wind tore loose a heavy tarp draped over a pile of metal.

The canvas lifted.

And something underneath caught the sunlight.

Emma stopped walking.

Her breath caught in her throat.

A motorcycle sat beneath the tarp.

It looked like a corpse.

The tires had rotted into sagging rings of rubber. Rust devoured the chrome. Thorny weeds had grown through the spokes like vines claiming an abandoned building.

But the shape of it—the sweep of the handlebars, the curve of the tank—made Emma’s chest tighten.

It looked exactly like the bike in her photograph.

Sully noticed her staring.

He leaned against the scrap pile, wiping grease off his hands with a filthy rag. His lips curled into a grin that showed too many yellowed teeth.

“Lookin’ to ride outta here, orphan?” he called loudly.

A few trailer park residents lounging in lawn chairs turned to watch.

Emma walked closer.

Her pulse hammered in her ears.

“How much?” she asked.

Sully barked a laugh.

“That thing?” he said. “Hasn’t run since 2010. Guy who owned it skipped out on rent and left it behind.”

Emma stood beside the bike now. Even ruined, it felt powerful. Familiar.

Like something she had seen in a dream.

Sully wiped his hands again and looked her up and down.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said mockingly. “Since you’re obviously loaded with cash… sixty bucks and you can drag it away.”

The onlookers chuckled.

Everyone knew Emma was broke.

Sixty dollars was survival money.

Three weeks of cheap noodles.

Water.

Food.

Life.

Emma reached into her pocket.

She pulled out the three wrinkled twenties.

Then she slapped them onto the rusted gas tank.

“Done.”

The trailer park exploded with laughter.

“You paid sixty bucks for scrap?” someone yelled.

“Girl got smoked!” another voice shouted.

Sully grabbed the money before she could change her mind.

Emma ignored them.

She wrapped both hands around the handlebars.

The bike didn’t move at first.

It took every ounce of strength she had to force the heavy machine forward through the dirt. Her arms trembled, her legs shook, and sweat poured down her face. The laughter followed her the entire way across the trailer park.